Why I'm P@ssed

Well hello there my little droogies, its the Madgrad, with the first edition of what I hope to be a continuing segment. Its a rant on what is bugging me about videogames. Today I'll target....platformers. Now I know this will be guarenteed to get me some mail, so let me jump right on in. Back in the 16 bit days, I played almost every platform game in existence, especially the Mario and Sonic series. They were good clean fun, but towards the end of the era they began to stagnate. So when true three dimensional platformers came out, I was ectsatic. Call me a masochist, but I love running around, jumping on bosses and solving those wicked jumping puzzles. But now I've noticed something disturbing. I've played the following platformers: Mario 64, all of the Tomb Raiders, Spyro, Banjo, Bubsy 3-d, Gex: Enter the Gecko, Blasto, and several others, so I do know what I'm talking about. My point is this:After playing Spyro I came to the realization that all of these damn games are the same. Each one has the same type of jumping puzzles, floating platforms, dumb enemies, and ticks that need superb timing to perform. I'm willing to bet that if you were to rip Spyro out of his Happyland and put him in a Mario game, no one could tell the difference. If you really look at all of the platformers out there, they all look and play the same. I got excited when I first saw the SOnic game for the DC, but it looks to be playing like any platformer out there now, just with a graphics update. Come on people, there is absolutely no innovation out there...NONE! I haven't seen a new boss trick, new puzzle, or anything that made me say "Damn, thats cool" in any of the recent platformers I've played. So tell me o loyal reader, am I nuts? Or has the genre gone to hell in a handbasket? Will the DC save the genre? Or will it die out for a while like side scrolling shooters did? Because I tell ya, if I see no new ideas coming out anytime soon. Just look at "Conckers Quest", or should I say Banjo 2 or really Mario 3? Tune in next week when I rip up third person camera control, and first person shooter weapons.

Madgraduate